By LORENA MONGELLI and ADAM NICHOLS
Last updated: 7:27 am
July 18, 2008
Posted: 3:33 am
July 18, 2008
A miracle baby amazed her parents yesterday by toddling around her hospital room only hours after plunging four stories from her bedroom window.
Cindy Riveros, 14 months old, bounced off a large rubber ball in the outdoor basement stairwell of her Flushing, Queens, home Wednesday night, her parents said.
"It's a miracle," her mom, Mariana Caseres, 26, said yesterday. "That ball, it saved her life."
The city Health Department and the Administration for Children's Services said yesterday they were investigating why child-safety guards had not been fastened to the window from which Cindy fell. Legally, landlords have to install the window guards in apartments rented to families with children.
"If there were window bars there, she would never have fallen," said Cindy's dad, Juan Riveros, 34. "We've asked the landlord to put them there, but he hadn't."
Caseres said yesterday a good Samaritan bundled her and her bleeding daughter into his car and rushed them to the hospital after mom dashed, hysterical, into the street.
"I ran downstairs and carried her out in my arms, I was screaming 'Help! Help!' " she said yesterday. "I was praying to God the entire time.
"A man I don't even know, he was my angel. He stopped and put us in his car, he drove us to the hospital. I don't even know who he is."
Cindy was rushed to New York Hospital Queens in critical condition. She was later transferred to Cornell Medical Center with a fractured skull. She was scheduled yesterday for head surgery to determine the extent of her injuries.
She remained in intensive care, but managed to leave her bed yesterday morning, taking a few steps. Her parents said doctors told them she would be OK.
"We are just so lucky that she's going to be all right," said her dad.
Cindy had been playing with a 4-year-old cousin in the apartment on 57th Road Wednesday when she climbed on a chair and toppled out the window.
"My niece came into the living room and she was shouting, 'She fell, she fell,' " said Cindy's dad.
"I ran into the room and looked out the window and she was face up in the stairwell, screaming and screaming, and there was a lot of blood."
Beside her were two basketball-sized soft rubber balls and a metal mattress cover. Her dad believes the mattress cover slowed her fall, and one or both balls stopped her from hitting the concrete.
"She was lying there with the balls beside her," he said.
"I can only think she fell on top of a rubber ball. She was so lucky."
